TEN DEN CIES IN FREN CH LITER A T URE. 2 1 3 



or he could hardly have denied the poet a high moral character, 

 merely granting him the possession of great shrewdness and discern- 

 ment. True passion, he remarks, was not popular with the crowd, 

 but " love-making, on the contrary, would draw, and love-making 

 accordingly is the staple of all his plays." It is against this view, and 

 against Mr. Saintsbury's further opinion that the tragedy of Racine 

 is at the furthest remove from an imitation of Nature, that Professor 

 Dowden makes a strong and timely protest. 



While applauding, however, the value of such novel opinions in 

 English criticism at least, we may suspect that in his desire to clinch 

 his arguments the author may have driven the nail too ruthlessly 

 home. And so it would appear when we seek in vain for any state- 

 ment which contains the shadow of a justification for the existence 

 of that powerful precieux spirit against which the greater classicists 

 rebelled. We are too inclined to take Moliere's word for it that they 

 were solely ridiculous, forgetting the explicit reserve of his preface 

 " aussi les veritables precieuses auraient tort de se piquer lorsqu'on 

 joue les ridicules qui les imitent mal." So let us then give the Pre- 

 cieuses credit for what they did confer to the advantage of letters 

 amid so much folly, and, weighing the matter carefully, their gift 

 to literature amounts to this: First, amid much linguistic and meta- 

 phorical pedantry they were free from the equally damaging and 

 ridiculous pedantry of a labored erudition which pervaded the litera- 

 ture of the day. In the second place, whether we regard it as an 

 advantage or the contrary, their influence made directly against the 

 licentiousness of the esprit gaulois, and for politeness and decency in 

 expression; and as a third count in their favor can we doubt that 

 straining as they did to express the nuances of sentiment and gallantry, 

 they were instrumental in stimulating that ardor of mental analysis 

 which is of all things the distinguishing mark of the century? A 

 word finally might have been said with a view to elucidating the in- 

 herent divergence of the precieux spirit from our own Euphuism, 

 from the Marinism of Italy, or the Gongorism of Spain ; a divergence 

 due certainly to the fact that the precieuses allied themselves to, and 

 accordingly strengthened, that spirit of social coherence so character- 

 istic of the life and letters of the time in France, whereas the influ- 

 ences of similar movements abroad were more transitory, inasmuch as 

 in some degree more isolated and tentative. 



The chapter devoted to the seventeenth century closes with a 

 critical review of the series of great preachers and theologians who 

 have left their mark more or less upon the development of thought, 

 while their literary significance can be comparatively slighted in a 

 history of this kind ; and the chapter which discusses the transition to 

 the eighteenth century broaches questions of such large issue that 



